Speech by Minister Tito Mboweni on Cabinet Decision on the
Basic Conditions of Employment Bill
Carlton Hotel, Johannesburg
17 April 1997
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning, we have invited you this morning so that we could brief you on the Employment Bill which has been under discussion for a while in the public domain and other places. And to appraise you on the approach being taken by the Cabinet on the Employment Bill. The Bill, as you know, has been the subject of heated - hot - debates in business circles, trade union circles, and all kinds of places.
It is without doubt one piece of legislative proposals which goes to the very heart of the relationship between employers and workers. The Bill is extremely challenging to everybody. It indeed demands of everybody the need to change step, to change work organisation, to change from an exploitative atmosphere to one which promotes social justice.
You'll recall from the Green Paper, which we published earlier, that this Bill replaces the Wage Act and also the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. And by so doing, it brings together two pieces of legislation which operated separately but nonetheless were inter-related.
Through this Bill we are ensuring that we depart from previous practice and introduce a new practice altogether. So, once again, yet another revolution in labour law development is upon us. This time, ensuring that we extend the basic floor of rights to all the working people of our country, indeed as part of that overall move forward to A Better Life For All our people. A Better Life must also mean a Better Life for working people. It mustn't be a hollow slogan that doesn't have any relevance at all to working people.
In many respects, the Bill we are about to present to you is an embodiment of our desires to achieve social justice for all hard-working people and we have argued, particularly as the liberation movement at the head of which is the African National Congress, that the attainment of social justice is one of the centrepieces of our march forward towards the political, economic and social transformation of South Africa.
And one of the central social forces which are critical to this process is without doubt the working people. To that extent, the position in our society which working people occupy should continuously and systematically obtain our focus and concentration.
We've argued, as well, that it is important for us to remember that "we cannot rebuild our society at the expense of the standard of living of ordinary men and women. We cannot develop at the expense of social justice. We cannot compete without a floor of basic human standards."
As part of our move forward to improve the lives of our people - employed and unemployed, intellectuals and farmworkers, mine and domestic workers - we are ensuring that our primary objectives of job creation, an improved investment climate and social wage developments are integrated into one cohesive economic and social programme. Integration means that we have to be systematic in our approach, broad-minded, take responsibility for our actions, measure the costs and benefits of our work carefully and above all ensure that our people fully understand each step in these processes.
With this Bill we write yet another chapter in the array of measures introduced by this government. All our plans must be read together because reading them separately inevitably leads to wrong conclusions. The Reconstruction and Development Programme is a programme for the rest of the democratic movement. It is our clarion call to ensure A Better Life For All our people.
The decision of the Cabinet is based on the primary objectives of the Bill which are to ensure that working conditions of unorganised and vulnerable workers meet the minimum conditions of employment which are socially acceptable in relation to the level of development of our country, to promote greater efficiency in the operation of the labour market and to remove any rigidities and inefficiencies from the regulation of minimum conditions of employment created before and during the apartheid era.
The Bill addresses, in particular, the issue of inadequate protection of vulnerable workers such as farm, domestic and part-time workers; issues of poverty in employment - and there is substantial evidence indicating that there are many working people who are in poverty while working.
It addresses issues related to child labour, excessive working hours (particularly in sectors such as security and transport). It addresses issues such as gender discrimination, particularly in relation to maternity leave.
The approach is that this Bill is in line with overall government policy and the new legal and constitutional order which we have in our country. And government policies are wide-ranging.
So, on its own this Bill cannot succeed. On its own housing policy cannot succeed. And so land policy and industrial policy cannot succeed on their own. All of these have to be seen in the context of an overall organised march forward by the government to achieve its objectives.
The decisions of the Cabinet is that Cabinet supports this Bill and mandates us to publish the Bill in the Government Gazette which we'll do tomorrow, and further that we submit this Bill to NEDLAC for negotiations. At the completion of the negotiations process, Cabinet will look at the conclusions of these negotiations before the Bill is submitted to Parliament during the course of 1997.
So, it is with a measure of happiness that we are able to say that what looked to some as an impossible task is actually attainable. That those who thought that there was division in the government were misplaced. This Bill is a united position of the Cabinet, in line with our commitment to the RDP.
May I end by saying that one of the issues on which there has been a lot of public debate is pay for maternity leave. Now, the Bill does not deal particularly with the issue of payment but what we are doing is to set in motion a process to investigate that issue and to advise me on how to handle that question.
We are setting up a Ministerial team to investigate mechanisms to improve maternity pay. This team is going to be composed of the following people:
Dorothy Mogale representing labour, Barry Shipman from organised business, Professor Charles Meth from the University of Natal, Aubrey Calata from organised business (representing NAFCOC) and Shadrack Mkhonto the Unemployment Insurance Commissioner.
Their terms of reference will be elaborated further but the critical issue is payment for maternity leave. Basically they will investigate and determine mechanisms for financing maternity pay including whether it should remain linked to the payment of Unemployment Insurance or other mechanisms established for the same purpose. They will investigate and determine mechanisms for the duration of such maternity payment and determine the amount of such benefits and also address the issue of maternity pay for domestic workers.
We are very keen that this issue which is so important must not be left unanswered in the process of negotiations. So, the team will have to work and finish their work in line with or parallel with the negotiations in NEDLAC so that when we finish the negotiations, that team will also be able to report and we will be able to consider their proposals.
Thank you
For inquiries phone Estelle Randall, Ministerial Media Officer on 082 7771745